San Antonio College Library

These 454 selections from 188 authors form the first major verse anthology in the United States. Kettell, who knew many of the poets, pens personal and sometimes withering biographical essays to achieve a comprehensive rather than solely pantheonic collection.

This volume explores the legacy of the works of American writer and poet Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). The author discusses how Plath's reputation was forged from the poems she wrote just before her suicide; how her estranged husband, the poet Ted Hughes, as executor of her estate, tried to serve two masters - Plath's art and his own need for privacy; and how it fell to his sister, Olwyn Hughes, as literary agent for the estate, to protect him by limiting...

"In the first biography of Longfellow in almost fifty years, Charles C. Calhoun seeks to solve a mystery: Why has one of America's most famous writers fallen into such oblivion? Can we truly understand nineteenth-century America if we ignore someone whose words were on everyone's lips - and who even today remains, in Dana Gioia's words, "the one poet average, non-bookish American's still know by heart"?" "Drawing on unpublished Longfellow family papers,...

Portrays the African American writer and man of letters Langston Hughes, his Midwest roots, his college days (already a recognized poet), his travels, permanent settlement in Harlem, and involvement in the Harlem Renaissance.

Includes material on "the lives and works of over 300 English-language poets of the last 700 years and spanning distant shores from Scotland to Australia to the Caribbean"--Paperback back cover.

"Have you ever imagined what you might be when you grow up? When he was very young, Juan Felipe Herrera picked chamomile flowers in windy fields and let tadpoles swim across his hands in a creek. He slept outside and learned to say good-bye to his amiguitos each time his family moved to a new town. He went to school and taught himself to read and write English and filled paper pads with rivers of ink as he walked down the street after school. And...

"In THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, Elizabeth Alexander--poet, mother, and wife--finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband, who was just 49. Reflecting with gratitude on the exquisite beauty of her married life that was, grappling with the subsequent void, and feeling a re-energized devotion to her two teenage sons, Alexander channels her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid prose that describes a very personal and...

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to be appointed Poet Laureate of the United States, details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, this is...

"Asian Americans inhabit a purgatorial status: neither white enough nor black enough, unmentioned in most conversations about racial identity. In the popular imagination, Asian Americans are all high-achieving professionals. But in reality, this is the most economically divided group in the country, a tenuous alliance of people with roots from South Asia to East Asia to the Pacific Islands, from tech millionaires to service industry laborers. How...